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THE HYPHEN IN 
AMERICAN HISTORY 




An Address Delivered at Johnstown, Pa., 
August 31, 1 9 1 6, on German Day 

By George Seibel 



(Reprinted from the "New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung" of 
September 4, 1916.) 

This pamphlet can be secured in any quantity at five cents 
a copy, fifty cents a dozen, or three dollars a hundred, from 

NEEB-HIRSCH PUBLISHING CO., 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 







GERMANY AND AMERICA 

By George Seibel 



In German forests Liberty was born — 

There Armin overthrew the boast of Eomc; 

There Truth and Beauty found another home, 
When from the holy soil of Hellas torn; 
There was the badge of Courage humbly worn, 

There Faith hath reared aloft her proudest dome; 

While Song rose radiant from her fountains' foam, 
Hypocrisy fell blasted by her scorn. 

America, thou art the heir of all 

The toil and dream, the glory and the song! 

Her sons have died for thee in many wars — 
And canst thou like a stranger see her fall. 
Or 'lend a hand in that eternal wrong 

-. To blot this blazing splendor from the stars! 




m6 



THE HYPHEN 
IN AMERICAN HISTORY 



By GEORGE SEIBEL 

Editor Pittsburgh "Volksblatt & Freiheits Freund." 



-^^URING the past two years a new disease has 
^M^ made its appearance in the United States, a 
malignant malady which no one had ever suspected 
before. It originated in something that seems to be 
harmless enough — a mere mark of punctuation. Of 
course, those who are familiar with the history of 
medicine have heard of the dangerous comma 
bacillus, discovered by Doctor Koch. He had some 
idea of the perils which lurked in the printer's case, 
yet even he couldn't have realized what a dire 
menace was hid in the seemingly innocuous hyphen. 
It remained for a famous Doctor from Princeton to 
discover this, and his horrifying discovery was veri- 
fied by the researches of another wise man — the peer- 
less navigator of the River of Doubt, the eminent 
founder of the Ananias Club, the mighty hunter of 
the Whiskered Bird, the discoverer of the Ten Com- 
mandments, the modern Diogenes, who is rushing up 
and down the land, searching for an honest man, not 
with a lantern but a looking-glass. 

The hyphen, however, is dangerous only in certain 
combinations. You may be an Anglo-Saxon, or a 
British-American, or Scotch-Irish, or a score of othef 
things with hyphens, and the hyphen will be a mark 
of distinction and a badge of honor. But if you are 



a German-American — that is, during the past two 
years — the hyphen is as dreadful as the brand of 
Cain, Formerly, when a careless workman smoked 
a pipe in a powder-factory and was blown up, people 
said it served him right. Nowadays, when hundreds 
of careless and unskilled workmen all over the coun- 
try, raked up from everywhere to manufacture 
munitions, blow up themselves and the factories 
where they work eighteen hours a day, the cry is at 
once raised, "Hunt the Hyphen!" 

If somebody with a German name, having heard 
that an American nurse in Germany died of blood- 
I')oisoning because she had no antiseptic rubber 
gloves, attempts to smuggle some sheet rubber into 
Germany, he is at once haled before a tribunal for 
the violation of American neutrality. He or she is 
bitterly attacked in scurrilous articles on the front 
page of papers which circulate especially in the 
circles that year after year swindle the United States 
Government by smuggling silks and furs from 
Europe, though they could well afford to pay the 
duties. But it makes a great deal of difference 
whether a British-American hyphenate smuggles furs 
and silks into America, or whether a German-Amer 
ican hyphenate tries to smuggle rubber into Ger- 
many. The one is only cheating the American people, 
but the other is disobeying the British foreign office. 

It would take a day to tell you all the horrors 
and crimes committed by these wicked Hyphens. 

Why, do you know that some even had the 
audacity to say they would not vote for the re-elec- 
tion of President Wilson. They did not care, it 
seems, how bad the "London Times" might feel if 
King George's American Maharajah should be de- 
posed. These wicked Hyphens are utterly devoid 

i 



of human sympathy. Some of them even had the 
temerity to criticise this same President Wilson 
M'hen he declined to attend the unveiling of a monu- 
ment to General Nathanael Greene. Who vfas 
General Greene? Second in command to George 
Washington. Who was George Washington? He 
was a hyphenate of 1776, 

Do you know that if you printed extracts today 
from the writings of Washington, Jefferson, Frank- 
lin, Paine, and their associates, and attempted to 
smuggle them into Canada or Ireland or India, you 
would probably be arrested? Why, there is even a 
little pamphlet written by William Jennings Bryan, 
to bring which into India would subject a man to 
being cast into prison. 

Sometimes I wish that old Johann Peter Zenger 
could come back to us. Zenger, a German hyphen- 
ate of the year 1733, was the first apostle and 
martyr of the American free press. He founded the 
first newspaper in America that tried to tell the 
truth. The truth, then as now, was unpalatable to 
the English authorities, so Zenger 's paper was or- 
dered to be burned by the hangman, and Zenger was 
thrown into jail. A trifling inconvenience like that 
did not scare a man like Zenger. He kept on editing 
his paper from his cell, giving instructions to the 
printers through a crack of the door. After years 
of persecution he established in America the prin- 
ciple of the free press, free until it was again fettered 
by chains of British gold. 

Remember that it was a German-American 
hyphenate who first secured for America the liberty 
of the press. The hyphenates have been first in a 
great many things, their connection with which in 
our day has almost been forgotten. Above all, they 



have always been first in every fight for liberty, in 
every battle against oppression, in every war for 
human rights. 

Do you know that the first protest against negro 
slavery voiced on this continent came from German- 
town in the year 1688, and the arguments were such 
that it w^as impossible to refute them? It took nearly 
150 years for the Puritans of New England to catch 
up with the humane idealism of Franz Daniel 
Pastorius and his comrades, whom the poet Whittier 
has called: 

"The German-born pilgrims who first dared to brave 
The scorn of the proud in the cause of the slave." 

Do you know that the first rebel against British 
tyranny on this continent was a hyphenate, Jacob 
Leisler? Just as, two centuries later, the first men 
on this continent to preach the new economic gospel 
of Socialism were hyphenated Germans. 

Do you know that it was a German newspaper, 
the "Staatsbote," which first told the people of the 
Colonies that the Declaration of Independence had 
been adopted? 

Do you know that the first Bible printed in 
America was printed by the hyphenated Christoph 
S'aur in 1743, forty years before any other Bible was 
printed in America? 

Do you know that fully two hundred years earlier 
a German hyphenate, Johann Cromberger, had es- 
tablished the first printing office in the new world, 
in the City of Mexico? 

Do you know that the first book on education 
produced in America was written by Christoph Dock 
in 1754, and that the first kindergarten was brought 
over in 1826 by Friedrich Eapp? 

Do you know that the first American Encyclo- 



pedia was compiled by Francis Lieber in 1828? 

Today our greatest Sanscrit scholar is Maurice 
Bloomfield, our foremost Semitic master is Paul 
Haupt, our most eminent authority on Chinese is 
Friedrich Hirth, 'our best-known Oriental archaeolo- 
gist is Hermann V. Hilprecht. 

The things of the mind and the spirit were 
always their first concern, but the German Pilgrims 
have been no less conspicuous as pioneers in the 
fields of industry and commerce. 

Do you know that Wilhelm Rittenhaus in 1690 
erected the first paper mill in America? 

Do you know that Thomas Ruetter in 1716 
founded the first iron-works in Pennsylvania? 

Do you know that another German, Kaspar 
Wuester, in 1738, founded the first glass-factory in 
America ? 

Do you know that a hyphenated Pennsylvania 
Dutchman, Thomas Leiper, in 1806, constructed the 
first railroad in America? 

Do you know that a German built the first steam- 
boat that plowed our western waters, and another 
German as her captain made the first trip from Pitts- 
burgh to New Orleans? 

Do you know that the first suspension bridge was 
flung, a hyphen of steel, across an American river by 
the hyphenated Johann August Roebling, as if he 
wished to impress upon the world the fact that the 
hyphen unites, it does not separate? 

Do you know that a hyphenated German- 
American is "the foremost electrical engineer of the 
United States, and therefore of the world"? I am 
quoting the words of the President of Harvard 
University in conferring a degree upon Karl P. Stein- 
metz. 



How many of our giant enterprises were founded 
by these despised hyphenates! I shall name only 
four. The great United States Steel Corporation 
sprang from the furnaces of Andreas and Anton 
Kloman, started about 1850 ; the family of the man 
who may be regarded as the father of the modern 
Department Store, John Wanamaker, was originally 
known as Wannemacher ; the ancestors of the founder 
of the Standard Oil business were called Roggen- 
felder; and all over the world, in 57 languages, you 
will see the praise of the 57 varieties associated with 
the hyphenated name of Heinz. 

Even so in the contiguous realms of beauty and 
of truth, in the radiant creations of art and the 
stupendous achievements of science, the Germans in 
America have done their share and need not be 
ashamed. 

Do you know that the Capitol at Washington, the 
most majestic structure in the new world, is the work 
of a German hyphenate ? Do you know that the most 
beautiful building in the new world, the Library of 
Congress, is also the work of two hyphenated 
Germans ? 

Do you know that the two largest telescopes and 
the two most important observatories in the United 
States were the gift of two hyphenates, Lick and 
Yerkes? A German-American, Heinrich Schliemann, 
dug up the buried grandeur of Greece and raised 
the mighty men of Homer from the world of shades. 

Do you know that Johann Behrent, in 1775, built 
the first American piano? Do you know that you 
can't buy an unhyphenated piano worth playing? 

The Germans have given us the singing society 
and the symphony orchestra, two great agencies to 
uplift and civilize the human family. But in more 



utilitarian fields of humanitarian endeavor we also 
owe to them some of our most admirable institutions. 
It was a German Barbarian, Henry Bergh, who 
founded the societies for the prevention of cruelty 
to animals and children. It was a German Hun, 
Arthur von Briesen, who started the first Legal Aid 
Society, the precursor of hundreds, in the new world 
and the old, that have helped to bring justice to the 
poor man. 

But there is another field in which the Germans 
of America have not been so prominent — the field 
of politics. They have a constitutional incapacity 
which they will have to overcome, for the sake of 
democracy. Politics in a democracy is the art of 
asking for something and getting your neighbors to 
think they are making you take it. The average 
German prefers to earn what he gets and to owe no 
man anything, and this has kept him away from the 
political grab-bag. But so far as he has gone into 
politics, he has always been the idealist, the states- 
man of pure purpose and lofty courage. 

Do you know that the original Lincoln man was 
Gustav Koerner, a bold bad hyphenate — what our 
whipped curs would call a "professional German"? 
Do you know that Christian Roselius, a hyphenate 
of Louisiana, was one man who had the patriotic 
courage to refuse to sign the Confederate constitu- 
tion? 

Do you know that the first treasurer of the United 
States was a hyphenated German-American, Hillegas? 
He served for fourteen years, and helped pull Uncle 
Sam out of many a hole. Look at his picture on the 
next ten-dollar bill you hand over to the German 
Red Cross Fund. 

Do you know that the first speaker of the Amer- 
ican Congress was a hj^phenated German- American, 



Muehlenberg? And in our generation the father of 
Civil Service Reform was that great champion of 
liberty in two worlds, the dauntless fighter of 1848 
and 1861, the sage and statesman, Carl Schurz. 

If they have not held so many of the offices, the 
German- Americans have fought more of the battles 
of America. In every great conflict they have poured 
their blood, blood from the Rhine and the Oder, from 
the Elbe and the Danube, upon the altar of patriotic 
devotion. 

The War of American Independence was largely 
fought by German soldiers. When Washington 
called for volunteers, the first to arrive w^ere German 
sharp-shooters from Berks county. Squads of Ger- 
man-American riflemen tramped six hundred miles 
from Virginia to Massachusetts to help throw the 
British out of the American colonies. It seems that 
they did not succeed in throwing all of them out, 
and a few more squads should go up to Boston and 
finish the job. 

When a conspiracy against Washington's life was 
discovered, it became necessary to provide him with 
a body-guard that could be trusted absolutely. 
Where was such a body-guard to be found? Where 
but among the Germans of Berks and Lancaster 
counties, Pennsylvania? Their captain was Major 
Bartholomaeus von Heer, a Prussian. If any one 
had come to George Washington, the friend of Heer 
and Steuben, and told him it was necessary to crush 
the Prussians, George Washington would have had 
the Tory scoundrel locked in the guard-house. 

It was not only the hundred and fifty stalwart 
men of Washington's body-guard that showed how 
the Germans stood during the War of the Rebellion. 
When Congress ordered Pennsylvania to furnish six 
companies, our hyphenated state furnished nine, four 

10 



of them entirely German. A German manufacturer 
furnished most of the cannon and rifles for Wash- 
ington's army, and when the soldiers were starving 
nine Germans donated $100,000 to buy provisions. 
When Congress was at the point of refusing more 
money for the purchase of arms, one man got up 
and said: "I am only a poor ginger-bread baker, 
but write my name down for two hundred pounds." 
His name was Christoph Ludwig, and he was a 
hyphenate. I have often wondered whether he was^ 
related to the heroine, Molly Pitcher, who was also 
a hyphenated American. Molly's maiden name was 
Marie Ludwig, lest we forget! 

The German bakers played a considerable role 
at that time. Frau Margareta Greider for several 
months provided the American soldiers with bread, 
refusing to accept payment, and in addition she sub- 
scribed 1500 guineas for the American cause. 

To tell of Johann von Kalb, who died at Camden, 
would require an epic. His death was no less heroic 
than that of Nathan Hale. "This is nothing," were 
his last words; "I am dying the death I have longed 
for. I am dying for a country fighting for justice 
and liberty." Yet he was only a Barbarian, only a 
Hun, like Baron von Steuben, who came from the 
armies of Frederick the Great to drill the armies of 
Washington. Steuben found at Valley Forge an un- 
trained mob, ready to disband in desperation. Some 
officers were in gowns made of bedspreads. It took 
$400 to buy a pair of boots. Steuben changed all 
this. From the time when he came upon the scene, 
there was an American army. At Yorktown the 
last British army on American soil surrendered to 
this Prussian. So the Germans drove the British 
from America. Alas, they have come back and taken 
Washington! Ah, would that Muehlenberg and 

11 



Herkimer, Kalb and Steuben could come back today! 
No names in American history shine more radi- 
antl}^ than those of Muehlenberg and Herkimer. See 
Muehlenberg in his pulpit, preaching his last sermon! 
"There is a time for praying. But there is also a 
time for fighting. That time has now come!" He 
throws off his clerical cassock and beneath it is the 
uniform of Washington's Continentals. Several 
hundred members of his congregation enlisted in his 
regiment. 

That other hero, Herkimer, paid with his life for 
the victory of Oriskany, which sealed the fate of 
Burgoyne's army. Smoking his pipe and reading the 
38th Psalm, his spirit passed into the realm of 
shadows, to walk beside Leonidas and Winkelried, to 
sit with Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone, and all the 
dauntless dead who died that Liberty might live. 

Do you know that Armistead, who defended Fort 
McHenry against the British, was a hyphenated Hes- 
sian? But for him it would have been sad mockery 
to ask with Francis Scott Key, 

"Oh, say, does that Star-Spangled Banner still wave 
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" 

During the Civil War, also, the despised and 
maligned Hyphenates played a prominent part in the 
preservation of the Union. As compared with other 
nationalities, the Germans furnished fifty per cent 
more than their quota of men to the armies of the 
North. One German family, the Pennypackers, fur- 
nished 88 men, from common soldiers to a major- 
general. The first volunteers to enlist were the Ger- 
man Turners of Washington. Three days after Lin- 
coln's call, twelve hundred Germans in Cincinnati 
were ready to march. That was real preparedness! 
Today preparedness consists in being ready to sell 
ammunition to the government at a fat profit. 

12 



No less than forty-eight Germans rose to the rank 
of General in the Union armies. Their names are not 
as familiar as some others, because they did not think 
that their service entitled them to be kept on the 
public payroll the remainder of their lives. But there 
are no more distinguished names than those on this 
roster : 

Gen. Carl Schurz 

Gen. Franz Sigel 

Gen, Adolph von Steinwehr 

Gen. Alexander von Schimmelpfennig 

Gen. Louis Blenker 

Gen. Peter J. Osterhaus 

Gen. George von bcuack 

Gen. Konrad Krez 

Gen. Alban Schoepf 

Gen. Julius Stand 

Gen. Samuel Peter Heintzelmann 

Gen, J. H, Heintzelmann 

Gen, G. D". Wagner 

Gen. August V. Kautz 

Gen. Hugo Wangelin 

Gen. Galusha Pennypacker 

Gen. Friedrich Hecker 

Gen. Max Weber 

Gen, August Willich 

Gen. Friedrich Salomon 

Gen. Karl Salomon 

Gen. Edward S. Salomon 

Gen. Isaak Wister 

Gen. Heinrich von Bohlen 

Gen. Franz Hassendeubel 

Gen, Louis Zahm 

Gen, Gottfried Weitzel 

Gen, Theodor Schwan 

Gen, Adolph Buschbeck 

Gen, Wilhelm Heine 

Gen. Gustav Kaemmerling 

Gen. Louis von Blessing 

Gen. August Mohr 

Gen. Julius Eaith 
Gen, F, C. Winkler Gen, G, E, Paul 

Gen, Johann A, Koltes Gen. Karl Leopold Mathies 

Gen. Hermann Lieb Gen. Edward S. Meyer 

Gen. Alexander von Schrader Gen. George A. Custer 

Gen, William C, Kueffner Gen. Adolph A. Engelmana 

Gen, George W, Mindel Gen. Joseph Gerhardt 

Gen. Felix Salm-Salm Gen. Hermann Haupt 

13 



Forty-eight names — and there are others! 

If it had not been for the Germans, both Missouri 
and Maryland would have been lost to the Union. 
One-third of the Union armies was of German blood. 
One man out of every ten was bom in Germany. 
General Robert Lee said, and Mrs. Jeff Davis repeated 
the sentiment: "Take the Dutch out of the Union 
■army, and we could lick the Yankees easily." 

Yet this man Wilson in Washington dares to ques- 
tion the loyalty of the German- Americans ! Where 
were the Wilsons in the great crisis of the Rebellion? 
Some were too proud to fight. Others were shoulder- 
ing guns for the Confederacy, shooting down Union 
soldiers with British bullets! Is it any wonder that 
Wilson insists we must furnish ammunition to Eng- 
land? He is paying off a family debt. 

Let me tell you that if some Gibbon of the future 
will have to write the Decline and Fall of the United 
States, there will be no German names in his roll- 
call of infamy. Germans have cemented with their 
sweat and their blood the battlements of Liberty's 
•citadel. It was not they that admitted the treacher- 
ous island pirates to our gates. Aside from one man, 
who made the name of Bethlehem a mockery of peace, 
they were not Germans who sold to our worst enemy 
the bombs and bayonets to murder our best friend. 
It was not the Germans in America who stood by 
smiling while Russia immolated the Jews and Japan 
strangled China. It was not the Germans in America 
that sold their birthright for a Carnegie pension or 
a Rhodes scholarship. It was not the Germans in 
America who betrayed the plans of the Irish Republic 
to Britain and sullied their souls with the blood of 
Dublin's hero band. It was not the Germans in 
America who spat upon the Declaration of Independ- 

14 



ence and cringed before the blood-stained bullies that 
called Abraham Lincoln an ape ! 

The German-Americans believe in the hyphen, but 
they know that the hyphen is a mark of union, not 
of separation. 

Firm as a wall of iron they have ever stood in 
defense of true Americanism. Still as a rock of 
granite will they stand, amid the storm of calumny 
and defamation, to save our country from a new 
British conquest. Morgan may give John Bull our 
banks, and he may buy our newspapers, but Justice 
is mightier than Gold, and Truth defies the slander- 
ous darts of Malice. "We can cry with Brutus, that 
' * We are armed so strong in honesty 

That your words pass by us as the idle wind, 

Which we respect not!" 

And like Armistead at Fort McHenry, like Kich- 
lein at Long Island, like Herkimer at Oriskany, like 
Quitman at Chapultepec, like Osterhaus on Lookout 
Mountain, like Schurz and Steinwehr on Cemetery 
Ridge, like Custer on the Little Big Horn, like Schley 
at Santiago, like Barbara Frietchie waving her flag 
before the eyes of traitors, the Germans will be on 
the firing line in any crisis — not watchfully waiting, 
but striking hard blows for the honor and glory of 
our flag and our country, the priceless heritage of 
liberty, the radiant hope of humanity — that govern- 
ment of the people, by the people, and for the people 
may not perish from the face of the earth! 



15 




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